Inside The iCloud-Hacking Ring That Leaked Those Naked Celebrity Photos

Kate Upton was one of the
targets of the iCloud hack.REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

The ability to gain access to Apple's iCloud accounts has been an
open secret among users of porn message boards for years, with
enterprising users charging others to "rip" accounts and share
nude photos.

Here's an ad on the site from a user looking to trade
leaked celebrity photos:

anonIB

This user advertises in both English and French to reach
the most customers:

anonIB

Experienced hackers charge higher prices:

anonIB

Reliable iCloud hackers gain a reputation in the community, and
clients will often choose to give one person all of their
business. Of course hacking online accounts for a living is
dangerous business.

Frequent posters often disappear without
warning:

anonIB

If someone can't provide the password for an iCloud account, then
hackers will have to use more inventive means. Some iCloud
"rippers" choose to use specialist hacking software to gain
access to an Apple account. Hacking an account with just an email
address takes longer and will cost more.

This is what password-hacking software looks
like:

anonIB

But if hackers don't have expensive specialist software,
they can instead try to force access to an account using Apple's
iForgot password reset tool:

anonIB

Apple's security questions can prove tricky for the
hackers to guess, so they pool their resources to come up with
common methods for hijacking an account.

anonIB

AnonIB iCloud hackers caution others learning the trade to be
careful when trying to take over an account. They claim that it's
often best to reset the password at night so that the password
reset email can be read and deleted before the target is
awake.

Once hackers have gained access to an iCloud account,
they use specialist data retrieval tools to download all photos
in bulk:

anonIB

While reliable, the retrieval software can't reliably
extract images from an iCloud account, and so hackers often take
to anonIB to request help:

anonIB

After downloading the stolen photos, the hacker will then send
them to the client, who will either share them freely with the
"Stolen Photos" community, or hoard them for himself. The
celebrity photo iCloud hack was most likely not an individual
hack, but a resident of AnonIB who had built up a collection of
celebrity photos using the iCloud hack exploit mentioned above
and chose to make them public.